Tag Archives: eventfulness

Thoughts on time and perception

Creativity in hostels is not just important for your guest-experience, it also enhances the quality of life in general. Literature has moved away from objective indicators of quality of life, into the understanding that subjectivity plays a larger role, connected to place, context and perception of time and time-related experiences. Quality of life is connected to leisure wellbeing, depending on factors such as :

Arousal;

Intrinsic satisfaction;

Involvement;

Mastery;

Perceived freedom and

Spontaneity

(Unger and Kernan, 1983)

In eventing for your guests in or from your hostel, make sure their time-perception is different from the commodified urban rhythms most guests are already acustomed to.

Rhythm and spaces

Nighttime should not be the mere opposite of daytime-rhythms. Remember to emphasise local big events, as they hold an important ritual meaning, important for the guest to construct their experiences with. Events as ritual, are bounded and seperated from everyday life.

Events can create ‘small spaces’ (Friedman, 1999), in which the time-experience is enclosed and can be marked and beautified by you as an event-maker. By length and nature and intensity of their qualities (Sorokin, Merton)

The events you organise and present, can create a sense of collective emotional entrainment (Collins), by introducing them to shared rhythms, marked by `zeitgebers’, like the gathering on a square at local big events, in which the guests’ participation within collectiveness is marked by larger markings, like a pre-party in your hostel, a fancy dress or themed gathering.

As signals, they lead to interaction and shared behaviour. The experience and experience of time can be constructed by entrainment and a shared sense of ritual factors, but in this case it can be externally constructed through ‘micro-temporal coordination’, making sure the conditions for entrainment are present: physical density and barriers to outside involvement (Collins; 2004)

Definitioner

perception (Grouping (Gestalt))

Gestalt Principles of Grouping

The German word “Gestalt” roughly translates to “whole” or “form,” and the Gestalt psychologist’s sincerely believed that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In order to interpret what we receive through our senses, they theorized that we attempt to organize this information into certain groups. This allows us to interpret the information completely without unneeded repetition. For example, when you see one dot, you perceive it as such, but when you see five dots together, you group them together by saying a “row of dots.” Without this tendency to group our perceptions, that same row would be seen as “dot, dot, dot, dot, dot,” taking both longer to process and reducing our perceptive ability. The Gestalt principles of grouping include four types: similarity, proximity, continuity, and closure.Similarity refers to our tendency to group things together based upon how similar to each other they are. In the first figure above, we tend to see two rows of red dots and two rows of black dots. The dots are grouped according to similar color. In the next figure, we tend to perceive three columns of two lines each rather than six different lines. The lines are grouped together because of how close they are to each other, or their proximity to one another. Continuity refers to our tendency to see patterns and therefore perceive things as belonging together if they form some type of continuous pattern. In the third figure, although merely a series of dots, it begins to look like an “X” as we perceive the upper left side as continuing all the way to the lower right and the lower left all the way to the upper right. Closure finally, in the fourth figure, we demonstrate closure, or our tendency to complete familiar objects that have gaps in them. Even at first glance, we perceive a circle and a square.Source

The importance of staging a tourism experience

Backlund, Jonas; 2014 All rights reserved
http://theseus32-kk.lib.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/84698/thesis2014.pdf?sequence=1
http://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2014121019249
The aim of this study was to show the importance of staging an experience in the tourism industry. Furthermore, it examined what a beverage experience is and what needs to be taken into consideration when one of these experiences is created

spaces (Triangulation)

The scenario where two people who don’t know each other start talking due to an external event. The catalyst could be a street artist or physical obect like a sculpture. Or it could be an unusual condition such as hail in summer, power failure, fire in a neighboring building or anything else that spurs people who do not know each other to start talking.
Triangulation is a critical factor for a successful public space. It includes the practices and activities of the public realm that create a linkage between people. Or what Whyte would call “that process by which some external stimulus provides a linkage between people and prompts strangers to talk to other strangers as if they knew each other”
(William H. Whyte)

Event

Evenement. An occurrence at a given place and time; a special set of circumstances; a noteworthy occurrence. (Getz 2007:18)

(Events are )special times and spaces in which specific rituals or practices can be developed and maintained. These practices are designed to meet particular objectives (such as building social cohesion or stimulating economic impact or image change) related to individual events or to the places and communities in which they take place. (Greg Richards)

Events can (...) become a means of changing social structures and creating new realities.